Cory picks up a basketball and swishes it through the net. Glenn asks how he did. He shrugs. Glenn suggests a double-decker cone. Cory is licking the side of his cone when he looks up at the ceiling. Glenn’s eyes naturally follow. “Gotcha,” Cory says and they laugh. For the moment the laughter melts away Glenn’s misgivings. He says not to mention the ice cream to Angeline.

  “Why’s Mom mad at you?”

  “She’s not.”

  “Then why’re you mad at her?”

  “I’m not.”

  The boy rolls his eyes.

  As soon as they turn in the driveway, Glenn’s stomach churns. He doesn’t understand himself, why he can’t just prepare her for Mel. Mel, who merely wants him to help perpetuate the lie.

  Angeline is in the family room watching television when Glenn opens the door. Cory rushes inside. She tells him to come give her a kiss, but he runs upstairs instead, his heavy adolescent feet thudding on every third step. Angeline hollers for him to brush his teeth.

  Glenn says, “He’s just at that age.” He crosses the room and sits next to her. “I like my home the way it’s always been,” he says.

  “Which means?”

  He shakes his head. Early in their relationship they’d agreed it was important to talk. Silence had destroyed their previous marriages. Though he wants to talk, he’s unsure what to say.

  “I don’t know,” he says, and as soon as he does, he realizes this was the worst thing to say.

  She stares back with a closed expression.

  Glenn uses the banister to climb the stairs.

  Cory lies on his back reading a book.

  “Is it good?” Glenn asks.

  Cory shakes his head slowly. “About Arthur Ashe. I only read the first page. I knew you two were fighting.”

  “We’re not.”

  “You’re not talking,” he says. “That’s fighting.”

  “It’s relative.”

  “It’s a fact. Didn’t you tell me if something’s a fact, it’s true?”

  “Must you remember everything I tell you?”

  “Gotcha,” Cory says.

  “Got you,” Glenn corrects.

  Glenn had noticed from the first night they’d slept together that Angeline could brush her teeth longer than anyone he ever met. Tonight she stays in front of the sink for a half hour. When she comes out, he asks if she brushed away all the enamel. She crawls under the cover and lies on her side with her back to him.

  “Tell me about someone from ’Nam,” she says.

  Keeping on safe ground, he tells her about Dodrey and the lipstick. She chuckles, flips off the light, and asks for a back rub. He kneads her back and says, “Now let’s play a new game. On the count of three you roll over.”

  She looks over her shoulder. “Did McPherson think Dodrey was funny?”

  “Mel?” Glenn feels himself shutting down again, then it occurs to him that Mel never laughed. “No.”

  “Tell me more,” she says, “about Dodrey.”

  “He was irreverent. We had to burn the latrines to kill fly larvae. One day he opened a can of Vienna sausage, put one on a sharp stick, and roasted it over the flaming latrine. He had the whole squad doing it, except McPherson, who couldn’t get into it.”

  “You ate them?” Her voice registers disgust.

  “No, just tossed them down the hole. It was something crazy and American.”

  “You liked Dodrey?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Lying in bed with the person who defines love for him, Glenn can’t put into words the feelings the squad members had for each other. He touches her cheek.

  “Were you a good soldier?” she asks.

  He considers it and realizes it’s the most fitting question anyone could ask about ’Nam, one he’s never been asked. “We were good.”

  “Even McPherson?”

  “Especially Mel.”

  “Let’s make love,” she says and strokes his head where it’s gone bald.

  Glenn awakens driven by a dream in which his wife is walking up a winding path on the side of a hill and though he calls to her she doesn’t stop. But it isn’t just her, it’s the hill, an incline covered with elephant grass and vine tangles where he can’t follow. He sits upright and listens to her breathing. She’s peacefully asleep.

  He tiptoes out and goes down to the den, where he opens the curtains and sits in the recliner. The storm has receded. A few black clouds slip across the moonlit sky like stalking cats. The wet sheen covers the green branches of the paloverde. He planted that tree when he and Angeline bought the house. He wishes he could hear the desert as he heard it when he first came back, when he could pick out the chirp of a solitary cricket, when his senses were keen and the dry hot air was a calming hush. He fears something is about to sever him from his world, that tree, this house, her, Cory, the students he teaches government to.

  He knows what Mel will be asking of him. Mel needs to be a hero, always needed that, but it’s hard to find heroes in memories of the days that followed Dodrey’s death. It’s as hard to find a hero as it is to pretend there’s no truth. Glenn wonders how strong the foundations are that hold his home together, how much fact his marriage can endure, how much respect Cory will have for a stepfather who has lied to cover up something terrible. His hands shake. He considers having a drink. But that won’t help. Perhaps he should call Professor Cloverdale and ask him how to cast the facts in a way that won’t shatter lives.

  Wasn’t it ethical to forgive those who went to Canada and Sweden? Weren’t the same kind of young men tossed into a turmoil and asked to risk their lives and do terrible things? Can’t they be forgiven their transgressions as well? How would Cloverdale, who was so quick to praise amnesty, answer that?

  Glenn feels cold. He’s used to the warmth of his wife’s body. Often he reaches for her in his sleep, and she nestles against him. In the morning he remembers it like a dream. He carries that dream with him throughout the day. That is fact. Glenn can prolong the lie. That is fact. Who can say how many men Mel saved? Isn’t that what heroes do? What happened now seems liquid, a memory he can drown in. Can it be, like the warmth of Angeline’s body, fact? Over there you wore the heat like a glove enveloping your body. It affected the mind. That is fact.

  ▪

  The rain had lifted the night before and now it was humid and scorching. Their fatigues blackened with sweat, they humped like old men bent under the weight of their loads. There was anger in each man’s step, a kind of plodding, obstinate step. After days of sloshing in monsoon rains, they despised Steinbrenner.

  Their already decimated platoon took seven casualties as they moved into the foothill villages. A Cong in black pajamas popped out of a hole and fired two shots before his rifle jammed. One hit Mullen under the right jaw and exited his eye socket. The squad went full rock ’n’ roll on the vc. Though he was dead from the first volley, the squad gathered around, and each man in turn shot one round into the body as the others urged him on.

  Steinbrenner shoved his way into the circle and ordered them to stop, said he wouldn’t tolerate barbarism. He’d heard about massacres, and nothing like that would happen in his platoon. The squad stared at the ground. Dickerson, who’d not yet shot, pointed his M-16 at the Cong’s head, squeezed off a round, and said, “ ’Scuse me, sir, was a ax’dent.”

  Steinbrenner had come to represent all that was fucked up about ’Nam. That night the platoon took a mortar barrage—four men wounded. Gonzalvo, Jones, and Smeltzer went out in body bags.

  In the morning the platoon was ordered out again, and Steinbrenner gave McPherson Gonzalvo’s .45 to carry and told him he was acting platoon sergeant. Glenn was promoted to leader of the Third Squad to replace Mel. Second Squad was down to four, so the lieutenant told Glenn they were part of his squad now. The unit numbered but seventeen as they climbed into the mountains southeast of Ha Tahn.

  Glenn’s squad took the lead and he assigned Malcomb to the point. By noon they were in vine tangles and elephant grass. Glenn asked Dickerson to take Malcomb’s place. Dickerson looked down at the ground and told him no. “What?” Glenn asked. This time Dickerson looked up as he said, “No fuckin’ way. You take it. Or McPherson or that fuck-up lieutenant they give us.”

  Glenn put out security and sent Ridgeway to get Mel. Dickerson was hardheaded, but he had never bucked Mel. Mel looked at Glenn and at Dickerson, who sat on a rock with his arms folded over his chest. Mel asked what the problem was. Glenn told him Dickerson refused to take point.

  “That right?”

  ”’At’s right, an’ no cracker’s gonna make me.”

  “Shit! They’ll court-martial your ass,” Mel said.

  By then Steinbrenner had worked his way up the line. When the lieutenant came into sight, Malcomb said he’d stay at point himself, that it didn’t matter to him.

  “Don’ matter nothin’ to me what he do ’cause I ain’t movin’,” Dickerson said.

  “Sergeant McPherson, is this soldier refusing an order?” Steinbrenner asked.

  “Not exactly, sir.”

  Lieutenant Steinbrenner pointed an index finger at Dickerson, said it sounded like he was, then called Dickerson “son” and asked him to redeem himself.

  Dickerson said he was no coupon to be redeemed and no son of a lieutenant either. The squad laughed.

  Steinbrenner’s cheeks reddened and he stepped closer. “I have the authority to shoot a man for mutiny or cowardice in the face of the enemy.”

  “No enemy face here ’cept yore’s,” Dickerson said.

  “Soldier, you obey the order you were given.”

  The platoon knew Dickerson was no coward. When they’d been pinned down near Boun Ma Thuot, he’d saved them by carrying a belt of ammunition to Mullen despite the heavy fire.

  The lieutenant looked at McPherson. “Sergeant, shoot this man.”

  Mel looked appealingly at Dickerson. “Look, man, I’m not going to kiss your ass. Now, quit fucking off.” He held the .45 at his side and licked his lips. “Come on, Dickerson. We go back a long way. Don’t do this.”

  “’At’s right, we go back. But he don’ go back wif us. Got Dodrey kilt an’ Mullen an’ Gonzalvo.”

  Now one by one the black soldiers sat down and folded their arms over their chests. Then the white soldiers followed suit. The lieutenant looked at them. “Sergeant, I said shoot him.”

  “’At’s right, McPherson, shoot my black ass. Don’ matter if you shoot me or some Cha’ley does. Dead’s fuckin’ dead, ain’t it? Ask Dodrey an’ Mullen.”

  Steinbrenner said, “Shoot. It’s a direct order, Sergeant.”

  Hand trembling, McPherson raised the pistol level with Dickerson’s head. His finger closed on the trigger. “Don’t make me, Dickerson.”

  Dickerson lowered his gaze toward the ground and nodded in resignation. “Get it done,” he said.

  “It’s an order, Sergeant.”

  Mel looked at the lieutenant out of the corner of his eye and shook his head. His arm went limp. “I can’t, sir.”

  “You’re under arrest, Sergeant,” Steinbrenner said. He drew his own .45 and chambered a round.

  Steinbrenner fired one round—that into the ground as he fell forward. The men gathered about and gaped at the hole in the dead officer’s head. For a moment Glenn stood motionless, his pistol still aimed where the officer had been standing an instant before. His arm dropped to his side as he looked at Dickerson and said, “Go take point.” Dickerson nodded and headed in that direction, but before he’d moved three steps, Mel ordered him to stop.

  “They’ll shoot us all,” he said.

  They circled about, nervous, worried. Mutiny. It was one thing to think of killing an officer and quite another to do it. Timmons asked what they were going to do, the question naturally directed at Mel. Turner, a sad-faced blond kid, said it was all Mel’s doing.

  “No,” Glenn said. “We’re in this together.”

  Mel stared down at the dead officer. When he looked up, he told them what needed to be done. When he asked if they all agreed, he looked to Glenn, who nodded. Some were at first reluctant, but gradually everyone agreed. Mel touched a finger to the lieutenant’s wound, unbuttoned his shirt and crossed his heart with the blood. One at the time, each man did the same.

  Mel rigged a grenade beside the lieutenant’s head and hooked a wire to the pin. He took cover behind the boulder where Dickerson had made his stand. A flick of the wrist and the evidence was gone. He called battalion HQ on the PRC-10 while in the background the men fired wildly, tossed grenades, and set off Claymores.

  Before he radioed for an evacuation, Mel argued that one casualty would seem suspicious. He told Glenn to shoot him in the leg. When Glenn hesitated, Mel insisted and closed his eyes. Glenn aimed for the meaty flesh of the left thigh away from an artery, but something happened, a twitch, an instant of reservation, something awful. The bullet strayed. McPherson collapsed, his knee smashed. It was left to Glenn to carry the decapitated lieutenant to the helicopter.

  ▪

  Glenn has often wondered how his aim drifted, sometimes isn’t sure it was an accident at all. No matter. It was his doing, and the debt followed. That, too, is fact, or has been until now. He’s not slept. He has been waiting for dawn or for a Cloverdale answer to come his way. Start by doubting everything, Cloverdale said. Glenn closes his eyes. Perhaps there’s something he hasn’t considered.

  When he opens his eyes, he sees Angeline leaning against the doorjamb. He hadn’t noticed her before and wonders how long she’s been there.

  “Something’s invaded my home,” she says.

  Yes, he thinks, they are under siege, the past invading the present in the form of words from a dying man’s lips. The truth impinges like an insurance agent who refuses to leave until the policy is signed. She asks if he wants company. He moves over and pats the cushion. She slides next to him, folds her arms over her breasts, and nestles her head into his shoulder. Glenn wonders what safety net is going to fall. He sees rocks below, sharp ones, that he must land on barefooted.

  “Did Mel save your life or something?” Angeline asks.

  “Me?”

  “Is that what this is about?”

  “No, Mel didn’t save me. It was luck and . . .” He looks at her. There was something in between firepower and body bags, something between men who needed each other. All of them were scared, but none were really cowards. They trusted. They trusted their weapons, their skills, but mostly each other. Cloverdale would never understand trust because it’s not based on doubt, yet it was clearly trust that kept them together, that perhaps kept them alive.

  “Tell me,” she says, bending her face closer, so near her breath stirs the hair on his neck. Her voice is not urgent.

  He feels a final pang of doubt, of fear, and asks for her hand. She links her fingers with his. He looks at their coupled hands and remembers a guy in the platoon, a new guy who got wounded his third day in ’Nam. Glenn and Dodrey took turns holding the guy’s hand. No name. No face. Just a guy who trusted them to get him onto a helicopter. Glenn wishes he could remember the guy’s name.

  They sit like that for several minutes, watching daylight filter through the curtains. Glenn sees the green branches of the paloverde. He pictures the day he planted it, Angeline bending down as he patted the dirt around it with his hands. They made impressions of their palms side by side in the soft black soil, then stood next to each other smiling down at the mound of dirt. This, he knows, is when he must begin. He squeezes her hand gently and says, “We were nineteen . . .”

  Tunnel Rat

  Young people were messy then—the war, the draft, plentiful drugs. Rowe and Betty were singularly so. They’d club-hop, starting at the Pussy Cat à Go-Go, the lounge at the Flamingo, then the International, up and down the Strip, dancing, drinking, and popping uppers, then back to the Pussy Cat and him off at daylight with no sleep to work for Grady. Rowe wore a T-shirt with a Superman emblem emblazoned in red and yellow. Betty slept while he worked.

  When she found out she was pregnant with his baby, she cleared her clothes out of the closet in their apartment and left behind a half-drunk bottle of tequila, a baggie of cross-tops, and a short note declaring she’d run off with Tom, a former lover. Rowe held the note, his hands ossifying as he stared at it, then his legs gave way and he collapsed into a recliner Betty’s father had given him.

  Rowe’s mother had warned him Betty would break his heart. Now she had. Eventually he popped the note into his mouth and chewed it to a wad compact enough to swallow. He dropped three cross-tops and chased them with the tequila. He didn’t bother to lock the door, just slammed it and headed into the night. One strong kick started his 650 Bonneville. He rode nonstop from Vegas to San Francisco, where he found a squalid Haight-Ashbury flat to hole up in.

  Earning money under the table, he laid carpet and stayed stoned or drunk for the next two months.

  Across the hall lived a self-proclaimed guru of the free love movement named Lonnie, who pushed acid and peyote. An avowed social revolutionary, on the side he interned as an entrepreneur, pimping fifteen- and sixteen-year-old runaway girls. One evening he and Rowe had a difference of opinion over a girl who said she wanted to leave if Rowe only would be so kind as to give her a ride to the bus terminal and send her back to Spokane.

  Lonnie caught Sunshine in the hall with her bedroll slung over a shoulder and pulled her to a halt by her ponytail. He insisted he loved her. Rowe told him to let go. He refused, so Rowe busted Lonnie’s jaw and two fingers. The girl’s loyalty wasn’t as unsettled as Rowe thought. She called the police. Fatigued from so much peace and love and fearing arrest, Rowe kick-started his Triumph in hopes it would hold together long enough to get him to L.A. It did.

  Against the wife’s objections, Rowe’s Uncle Harve sheltered him in his Bellflower home. They were blood, Uncle Harve contended, no matter how Rowe smelled or how unkempt he looked or even if he was a federal fugitive, which he might be.